Cigarettes are totally banned, black-market butts cost $200 a pack, a “loosey” goes for $40, and matches are so rare you have to spark a light by rubbing two wires together against a broken battery.
It’s not some glimpse into a future Bloombergian world of surreptitious smoking.
It’s Rikers Island right now.
A bag of loose tobacco that stores sell for $2 might bring $50 to $60 in the cell block, jail insiders said.
“There’s got to be thousands of dollars exchanged behind these walls,” one inmate told The Post.
To light up, crafty cons have mastered the art of creating a “match” by attaching commissary-bought headphone wires to the tops of decapitated batteries.